Given a program process (say Visual Studio 2012), how can I access it's menu items programmatically?
I'm not at all sure what APIs I would use or how to even Google this.
Thanks in advance.
Start with GetMenu(): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms647640(v=vs.85).aspx and over on the left are all the other menu functions. (Assuming you're talking Win32 API.)
Since it appears you have the process ID, you can find the main window's HWND from here: Win32 - Get Main Wnd Handle of application
unfortunately, more and more programs don't use the traditional "menu" subsystem. The answer given by Graham will work for some simple application, as calc.exe and notepad.exe, but not for VS2012.
I suggest using UIautomation.
The Windows SDks come with an "accessibility" tool, Inspect, that will show you if you can expect good support of UIAutomation by applications.
Microsoft now recommends using Accessibility Insigths instead:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winauto/inspect-objects?redirectedfrom=MSDN
Related
I am trying to write a very limited taskbar replacement without the start menu and the standard desktop.
But now i wonder how explorer.exe works internally.
1.) How does the taskbar catch minimizing windows?
2.) How do the taskbar get to know when a window opens or closes or somthing? (Is there an api?)
3.) How does explorer.exe enable visual styles? (If it doesn't run all styles are disabled and it looks like win9x)
Review the SetWindowsHookEx() documentation in the MSDN Library. The important hook type here is WH_SHELL.
SetWindowsHookEx with a WH_CBT or WH_SHELL hook (I'm not sure if WH_SHELL works 100% on all systems when explorer is not running)
As far as #3 goes, I don't think I have seen that problem.
Explorer uses a lot of undocumented functions, you should take a look at some of the open source replacement shells or google RegisterShellHook, ShellDDEInit and ARW_HIDE
Check RegisterShellHookWindow, I believe Microsoft added it to avoid having to maitain a 32-bit and a 64-bit hook on newer x64 OS versions.
Is it possible to develop win32 UI application for Pocket PC with multiple dialogs
we need to display each dialog based on user input and hide previous dialog when current dialog is displayed on window.
Thanks in advance
Sure, that sounds a lot like standard application behavior, which is supported. The only thing not supported is MDI. Programmatically it's going to work just like on the desktop, so examples using calls to CreateWindow or CreateDialog will be applicable.
Hi how can i implement "switch to" functional in my app like in windows task explorer, can any one give me useful link or response how to do it?
Tnaks a lot for all
SetForegroundWindow is the normal way to change "current task", for "task switcher" apps, SwitchToThisWindow is a better solution since it does not require your app to be "foreground" (But please, don't abuse SwitchToThisWindow just to bring your own apps to the foreground)
If this is a alt-tab like application, you can use RegisterHotKey to register for a special key press, and EnumWindows to enumerate top-level windows...
Use the SwitchToThisWindow() Windows API function in User32.dll. Get a handle to the window using EnumWindows() or FindWindow(), then pass it to SwitchToThisWindow() to switch to the app.
Using WinXP. What I need to do (pref in VB or c#) is to detect when another (closed source) program displays a notification balloon in the tray - and grab the details. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
In similar situations, I have used the Microsoft tool Spy++ to grab the window information and then uses pinvoke calls to FindWindow to detect when the window is present.
I've not tried with a notification balloon, but I imagine that a pinvoke call to GetText would retrieve the contents.
I think you'll need to use pinvoke to do this from a .net language.
On the system I'm using now (Vista Business SP2), balloon windows always seem to have window class #32769 (reserved for desktop windows) and the windows style bit TTS_BALLOON set.
The following might work: Determine the parent window for all notification balloons by creating a temporary one, getting its hWnd, and calling GetParent() before deleting it. You could then periodically poll the children of this parent hwnd (using EnumWindows() or FindWindowEx()) looking for windows with the required class and style.
This seems highly non-portable to me, and likely to require a lot of testing on a variety of platforms.
pinvoke.net and spy++ might be useful.
Good luck!
You will definitely need to use Win API calls to achieve this. If this is the only thing you're trying to do, you'd be better off using straight C or C++ so you don't have to do a bunch of platform invoke for C# or VB.
Since andyjohnson identified that the window class for all notification balloons is #32769, and that they have the TTS_BALLOON style set, you could use a CBT hook (if you're not familiar with Win32 hooks, you might want to read up on them), to get a callback whenever a window is created, and check for windows of that class and with that style.
I'm not sure, though, if a new balloon window is created for second and subsequent popups or if the same one is just hidden and reshown. If this is the case, you might need a CallWndProc hook, to get WM_SHOWWINDOW messages.
Edit:
I should mention that the hooks that I've mentioned cannot be implemented in .NET. Except for the low-level keyboard and mouse hooks, global system hooks must be implemented in a native (unmanaged) DLL. Windows will load this DLL into other processes, and if a managed DLL gets loaded into a process that doesn't have the .NET CLR loaded, it will crash that process. (Even if the CLR is loaded, it might be at a different address, also causing a crash.)
So you must build your hooks in a native (unmanaged) DLL. It's possible to interface from here to a managed application, such as Michael Kennedy has done on Code Project, but to do it properly, and handle the hook types I've mentioned above, you'd need to use interprocess communication, a step that Michael Kennedy left out. All in all, for the purpose you've described, it would probably be easier to just build the whole thing in native code.
I'm currently in the process of writing a Windows MFC app to quickly search our corporate DMS. The idea is to have a button placed at the right hand edge of the windows taskbar much like the language bar, that when clicked, would popup the search interface.
I can't seem to find much regarding how placing items in the taskbar like this is performed, can anyone point me to some useful resources or examples?
I'd prefer native API resources (that is, not .NET) if possible.
Thanks!
Such toolbar is named a Deskband.
Here's an example: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/shell/dotnetbandobjects.aspx
You could look at the StExBar. It implements an explorer toolbar which can also be added to the taskbar. Doesn't use MFC though, just plain win32.